Today food producers are striving to reduce energy consumption in order to decrease costs as well as provide food products processed in an environmental friendly way. There are different ways to achieve these objectives. One straight forward way is to use components using less electricity, steam, water etc. For instance, by replacing an old tubular heat exchanger with a new energy optimized one the amount of energy needed for heat treating the food product can be reduced. Another way to reduce the energy consumption is to increase the line efficiency. This may for instance be made by designing the line in clever way such that less water and detergents are needed for cleaning the line. Still another way is to provide more flexible components and line solutions such that appropriate conditions for a wider range of combinations of products and/or volumes can be achieved. For instance, if a food producer today would like to run his plant at half capacity, this may not be possible if the line is not built to be run at half capacity. In other cases, it may be possible to run at half capacity, but by using more than half of the energy used when running full capacity, this in practice does not make this a feasible alternative. Further, in many cases, there is an increased risk that the food product is processed non-optimal when running at a capacity lower than full capacity, in turn resulting in increased product losses.
One piece of equipment that has historically been difficult to make in a way such that it can be used for different capacities is a heat treatment apparatus, e.g. tubular heat exchanger. The heat treatment apparatus most often comprises sections for pre-heating, holding, final heating and cooling. It has proven difficult to design such an apparatus being capable of running at different capacities without affecting the product quality negatively.